Pale Blue Dot

node

A photograph taken by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990, from about six billion kilometres, in which the Earth occupies less than a single pixel. It was one frame of about sixty making a family portrait of the solar system — the only such portrait ever taken from outside it — and it was the last thing the cameras did before they were switched off to save power and because there was nothing left within range to photograph. The streaks of light crossing the frame are scattered sunlight in the optics, not a compositional device: the Sun was very close to the Earth in the field of view, which is exactly why the picture had been considered risky. The image has no scientific content. Its influence has been entirely on how the mission is understood.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.